Blue Highway: the band remains the same

"What I think is really special about the band - well, a couple of things, but the songwriting, to me, is just a really strong point because I like being in a bluegrass band that's really creative."

"I wouldn't want to be in a band that plays covers all the time. I love when these guys play a new song - and I mean, these guys are writing some great songs - and we've got a whole album full. We've always had a lot of originals on our records. So, to play bluegrass, but not have to play a bunch of covers is really cool for me...I think we're really pushing the envelope as far as chord progressions and lyric-wise. I can't think of any other band that does that."

By "these guys," of course, Ickes means Stafford, Taylor and Lane (though he and Burleson contribute instrumentals), and there are few other bands that can boast as many as two talented songwriters, let alone three. One of the hallmarks of the Blue Highway sound has been the depth and breadth that the varied, yet complementary styles of this trio bring.

On "Marbletown," for example, Taylor again demonstrates his story-telling talents with "No Home To Go Home To," while Stafford visits the Old West with "Wild Bill," a biography-in-a-song. It is, says Ickes, just another ripple on what he has come to appreciate as a very deep pond.

"Tim is a very bright guy. He has a master's in history, he is very well-read, and he's one of these guys - I don't know if he has a photographic memory or what, but he just remembers everything that he's read. It's funny because, especially late at night on the road, we'll be driving down the highway, and we always get into these discussions, either metaphysical or historical or whatever...so he just got into this Wild Bill Hickock thing a few years ago, and it's pretty accurate. It's neat, it's like a folk song that's describing historical events."

Lane wrote "Wild Urge To Ramble," and if it sounds like he's "channeling" someone, Ickes says that's not far off the mark.

"Shawn says that when he was coming up with it, he just heard Del McCoury singing it...so we tried to kind of put a 'Del McCoury Band' spin on it, the way we arranged it. But yeah, Shawn has said that he just had Del McCoury's voice going through his head when he wrote that, so I guess Del inspired that one."

Not wanting to be a "cover band" doesn't mean never doing covers, though, as the new disc's title track attests. Written by Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler, it was Stafford, according to Ickes, who pegged it as prime Blue Highway material.

"Of course, we're all familiar with Dire Straits, but Tim probably knows Mark's stuff more than the rest of us, and that song came off an album that Mark did that was sort of acoustic, had a lot of acoustic guitar. His version is just guitar and vocal, and it's really nice, and Tim just thought this could be a really great bluegrass song, and we just came up with a really nice arrangement that fit the lyrics, and Mark really likes it too, so that's pretty cool, to get a nice tip of the hat from him."

Bluegrass has a long history of dominant bandleaders who mold and bend the talents of their sidemen to fit their own concept of "what it should sound like," and, of course, the music began as the expression of Bill Monroe's personal musical vision.

For the self-described democracy of Blue Highway, though, a big part of what keeps them together is the challenge and sheer joy of jumping in together to see where the music takes them.

"A lot of times, we just start playing, you know, and it's funny because we teach at these workshops...and we teach individual instruction during the day, and in the afternoon, we'll teach band. They'll make bands out of all these different players, and then we'll talk about that, about the arrangements and things."

"One thing I see (among the students) is that everyone tries to just (think) it out too much, kind of talking about it too much instead of just playing. I always try to tell everybody, just play, and what's gonna happen is, there's gonna be a lyric in that verse that the Dobro player's gonna like. He's gonna hear something that he wants to play on there, and he's gonna grab it, and it just happens. And that's how we (Blue Highway) arrange stuff, we just start playing."

Developing close musical bonds and friendships with each other certainly helps a lot, says Ickes, but on the other hand, as they learned in their first couple of years, nothing succeeds like success.

"Everybody's pretty easy to work with, and I think when we got started, we caught everybody at a good time. Everybody could commit, and I think that's the hard part when you're getting a band together, is getting the commitment. The other thing that helps is, our first record did really well. It won album of the year (IBMA, 1996), and we won a lot of awards when the band first started, so that kind of kicked us up a couple of notches as far as getting a lot of bookings, so we could afford to get the band off the ground."